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How to conquer j-students' fear of technology
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It's easy to assume the younger generation understands technology - but when it comes to multimedia storytelling, a lot of students admit they're computer illiterate. Jen Lee Reeves offers tips for teaching technology to Luddites.
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Textbook for potential j-students
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 Peter Steven’s new book, The News, uses current case studies to explore the state of online news, international and investigative coverage and Canadian news production in the wake of the economic meltdown, ideal for high school students considering J-school Lisa Bruni writes.
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Sharing course syllabi
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When preparing to teach a journalism course, especially for the first time, it's always helpful to find out what other j-educators do who teach the same kind of course.
Now Poynter's News University has established a Syllabus Exchange, a database of course syllabi, assignments, exercises and other teaching materials that can be shared.
You earn points for sharing your materials and can use those points to download materials from others who have agreed to share.
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A new style guide for web writing
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Yahoo has decided it's time for an alternative to traditional style guides when it comes to text written for the Web. In July, 2010, it will launch The Yahoo! Style Guide: The Ultimate Sourcebook for Writing, Editing, and Creating Content for the Digital World. Like the CP Style Guide, it will be a guide to grammar, punctuation and style for online writers and editors. But the Yahoo guide suggests some different spellings. For example, it says email should not include a hyphen and smartphone should be one word.
It will be more than just a style guide, too. It will include advice about adapting written material for an online audience, making the text more accessible to search engines and writing strong headlines. It plans to release a print version of the guide, as well as versions for Kindle and the Ipad.
Will Canadian journalism educators teaching online journalism consider using this?
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Using actors to teach journalism
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 Show don’t tell is a writing 101 rule, but Ryerson j-prof Anne McNeilly uses it in her teaching. Hiring an actor to stage a dramatic scene in class pushed the students into reporting mode and created "the most memorable classes" McNeilly has ever taught.
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Six things all j-students need
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 I wonder, writes Ryerson University online journalism instructor Leigh Felesky, what students are being told "journalism" is these days. Felesky lays out six skill areas that j-schools should focus on in these changing times.
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Journalism students and their course under legal scrutiny
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Prosecutors in Illinois have subpoenaed the notes, email messages and even grades of students involved in an investigative reporting project. For years journalism students at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism have been attracting attention for investigative reporting exercises which proved several people were wrongfully convicted and lead to the release of 11 inmates. Now state prosecutors want details of their methods, including the grading criteria for the course. The university if fighting the subpoenas.
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Teaching the future of journalism
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Professors can't lecture about the future, says Tim McGuire, who holds a chair in the business of journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. But he plans to teach his students this fall about the business models of media and how the tension between producing quality journalism and making a profit might shape the future of the media. He has posted his syllabus online, complete with links to a lot of online readings. In it he writes, "We will try to understand where the media is headed amid this mind-boggling change. We will try to develop our own ideas about those future content and business models."
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Re-thinking lessons for j-students
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One journalism educator is rewriting her lessons for the fall semester to include more straight talk for j-students and less emphasis on old arguments about the role of journalists in a democracy. Danna Walker, a j-prof at American University in Washington, has come up with what she calls the Seven Laws of Journalism. Among them:
- Money counts
- Grow a pair
- Life is hard (so deal with it).
The change is needed, she says, because too many j-students think of journalism in "old-school" ways. Her full list of the laws of journalism, along with her explanations for each of them, are available on her blog post.
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There’s no way students will read 5000-word articles every week, colleagues told Ryerson j-prof 
Journalists are conditioned to fear and avoid mistakes but that doesn’t prevent errors, writes 
Learning to identify stories, find sources, interview, take notes and write isn’t enough, writes Carleton journalism prof 
As budgets and reporting teams shrink, lessons can be learned from what a team of University of King’s College students accomplished in an investigative workshop.